


You Don't Have to be a Ghost

by IlliterateBuckyBarnes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Obi-Wan adopts another sad kid, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-ANH, Sad Obi-Wan Kenobi, and i'll say it again, post-ROTS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IlliterateBuckyBarnes/pseuds/IlliterateBuckyBarnes
Summary: "Obi-Wan was, in the end, completely alone. Memories, events, people too painful to remember flashed across his mind anytime he closed his eyes, and so he tried to avoid it as much as possible. Some Jedi he was, too caught up in his attachment to A- to him, that he couldn’t stop what he should have known was coming. He always advocated for him, fought for the Council to give him more freedom, more respect. He’d played right into Palpatine’s hands, handing him over to Palpatine on a silver platter. He should have sensed the darkness rising, should have felt the disturbance in the force as their chosen one was Falling, for Obi-Wan now knows it was a process, not a quick thing. He could have stopped this, could have prevented the deaths of the entire Jedi order. Had he just avoided the attachment, the- no. It will not help him to dwell on his mistakes. Instead, he must focus on what he will do, rather than what he didn’t. "After the events of episode iii, Obi-Wan has a plan to end Palpatine's rule before it can truly begin. He just didn't account for a 16 year old sidekick.
Kudos: 3





	You Don't Have to be a Ghost

Obi-Wan was, in the end, completely alone. Memories, events, people too painful to remember flashed across his mind anytime he closed his eyes, and so he tried to avoid it as much as possible. Some Jedi he was, too caught up in his attachment to A-  _ to him _ , that he couldn’t stop what he should have known was coming. He always advocated for him, fought for the Council to give him more freedom, more respect. He’d played right into Palpatine’s hands, handing him over to Palpatine on a silver platter. He should have sensed the darkness rising, should have felt the disturbance in the force as  _ their chosen one _ was Falling, for Obi-Wan now knows it was a process, not a quick thing. He could have stopped this, could have prevented the deaths of the entire Jedi order. Had he just avoided the attachment, the- no. It will not help him to dwell on his mistakes. Instead, he must focus on what he  _ will _ do, rather than what he didn’t. 

And that is how he ends up on a planet similar to the one he visited so many years ago, back when he was a padawan, back when he first met him. This planet, like Tatooine, lies on the outer borders of a system too small to be notable. Frankly, Obi-Wan would probably never have even thought about this destitute planet if he hadn’t been trying to find  _ them _ .

Them- the former Jedi, the ones that had defected, the ones that left the Order, or the ones that were asked to leave. If he can find them, if he can convince them to help him, then maybe, just maybe he can undo what has been done. He can dethrone Palpatine, help reinstate a democracy. But he’ll have to find them first. 

He had thought of the idea of bringing in former jedi before Anakin had fallen, back during the Clone Wars. He had even stolen a record of the former “defected” jedi from the archives. Once Anakin Fell and the Empire took control, Obi-Wan remembered these records, and in between making arrangements for Leia and Luke he found the small record book, taking it with him as he left the planet for good. 

The clearest first choice was Shiara, one of the few on the list that he had known personally. In fact, they had been padawans together, friends even, before they had learned that code didn’t approve of true friends. She didn’t understand, had tried to continue their friendship, but Obi-Wan had always been the obedient little soldier, even then, and he greeted her with only the indifference of acquaintances. They were 16 when she left. 

The first thing he notices when he approaches her home is the droids. There are droids everywhere, scattered across the property, leaning against the cottage, rolling around the fenced in lawn. Droids in general made him uneasy, what with their lacking a force signature, and seeing such a concentrated amount in one area put him on high alert.

As he approaches the door, it slams open, what appears to be a small BB with the head of an R2 unit zooming past, beeping loudly at whoever was in the cottage. Said person comes running out, all gangly limbs and engine grease, chasing after the strange droid hybrid with some sort of screwdriver. 

“Get back here, you little devil! Let me fix that port!” She takes off running after the droid, which only beeps louder, nearly tripping over herself when she sees Obi-Wan.

“Hello,” Obi-Wan says to the young girl. She couldn’t have been more than 16, and she was looking at Obi-Wan as though he were the last thing she had expected to see, and frankly, he was sure his expression was the same. “I’m looking for someone, though I appear to have arrived at the wrong place. Do you know a Shiara Pri?” As soon as his old friend’s name leaves his mouth, the girl’s already large eyes widen even more. She backs away from him, taking in his tattered robes.

“Who are you?” She asks, her grip tightening on the tool in her hand, holding it in front of her like a weapon.

“My name is Ben,” He replies, falling back on the old pseudonym he would use for undercover missions. “I am just looking for an old friend of mine, and I was under the impression that I would find her here.” 

“My mother didn’t have any friends.” The girl is incredibly tense, and she continues to slowly back away.

“Your mother is Shiara Pri?” Obi-Wan’s voice is incredulous. He certainly hadn’t expected to find Shiara to have a child. She had never seemed like a particularly nurturing woman, although Obi-Wan had only known her up until her teenage years. 

“Why are you here?” The girl has stopped backing away, but the screwdriver is still being held in front of her, her hands shaking slightly. 

“I told you, I am looking for Shiara,” Obi-Wan repeats, though with a bit more patience. “I have a proposition for her. I can assure you, I mean no harm.”

The girl lowers her screwdriver, her wide eyes running over him, assessing him. Whatever she sees must be satisfactory, and she steps aside, saying “Come with me,” and leads him back into the cottage. 

Inside the cottage, there are just as many droids and droid parts as were outside, and in what was clearly intended to be a family room, there was a makeshift repair shop set up. The girl guides him past that area into a small kitchen, and gestures for him to sit in one of the chairs at the small table. He sits, the chair squeaking beneath him, and she brings over two glasses and a pitcher of water. 

“I didn’t know Shiara had had a child” Obi-Wan says, trying to break the awkward silence. 

“Why would you?” She asks while pouring water into the two cups. “After she left the Order, she obviously wouldn’t be sending little life updates.” 

Obi-Wan nods at this. “Where is your mother? I do need to speak with her”

“She’s dead” Obi-Wan nearly drops his glass of water. 

“Dead?” He asks, incredulous. Because this can’t be true. His first recruit can’t simply be dead. He came too far for that.

“Dead.” The girl looks as though in physical pain every time she says the word, and Obi-Wan momentarily feels bad for his being obtuse. “She’s been dead for almost a year now”

“I’m terribly sorry. What happened?” He isn’t sure if he should be asking this question, but he has to know.

The girl shifts in her chair, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear and out of her face. 

“She died trying to remove her midichlorians.” Obi-Wan gasps.

“But, that’s impossible!”

“I know.” The girl looks even more uncomfortable, picking at a hangnail on her pinkie. “When she left the order, it really messed her up. She was, like, super paranoid. It got a little better when she met my dad, and then she had me and we were a happy little unit and everything was great.” She succeeds at ripping off the hangnail, and a bead of blood forms, the wound too small for it to grow enough to fall. “But then one day, my father went out to deliver the droids we had been repairing, and he didn’t come back. We looked for him all night, but we didn’t find him until the next morning.” She looked up at Obi-Wan now, dark eyes squinting at him, a mixture between glaring and studying. “He was killed by a lightsaber.” Obi-Wan pales. 

“A sith?” he asks, wondering at what sort of situation he’s gotten himself into. The girl shakes her head. 

“No. A jedi.”

“But, that’s impossible. What could he have done to garner the attention of the jedi?”

“You truly don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“The Order isn’t as understanding about Jedi leaving the order as you think. They hunt down anyone who leaves, because they’re afraid of them speaking out against the order. And if they don’t speak out, well then they’ll probably Fall without the meditation and rules of the Jedi way. We lived in constant fear of the Order finding us and killing my mother. My father’s death was a message that they were near, and had he been any closer to the house, they would have found us for sure. This happened when we were on the other side of this planet. We didn’t have any way to leave the planet, so we just had to hope that getting away from where my father was found would be enough to keep us safe, and it did. But after that, my mother’s paranoia only got worse. She cut herself off completely from the force in an effort to keep them from finding us.”

“But cutting oneself off from the Force can be…”

“It can be detrimental to the wellbeing of that force user, especially if you had grown up using the force the way she had. It deteriorated her brain, and between her paranoia and grief for my father, there would be days on end when she would be completely unresponsive. She would just shut down. I had to run the business myself to keep us fed, and then she began talking about her midichlorians. She wanted them gone, thought that if she didn’t have them anymore then she wouldn’t be like this anymore. If she couldn’t use the force, then it’s pull wouldn’t ruin her. She was so wrong.”

Obi-Wan’s blood goes cold. She couldn’t have possibly tried to remove her midichlorians? It would be impossible. “She didn’t”

The girl nods, her eyes growing distant, the shadows of the fear she must have felt beginning to creep through. “I was outside, testing the treads on an R2 unit I had been repairing. I was out there for maybe an hour, tops, but when I came inside, she was dead.”

Obi-Wan didn’t want to know how Shiara tried to do it, didn’t want to know what this, this child saw when she came inside. He didn’t want to think about how it must have felt to see her mother, the woman who she had taken care of for years regardless of how their roles should have been reversed, how it must have felt to see that she was gone. Obi-Wan is familiar with failure. Failure has been the only constant in his life, the only concept he could ever be intimate with, the self-loathing never able to be released into the force completely. 

Obi-Wan looks at this girl whose name he doesn’t even know and he is overwhelmed with the emotions he’s tried to hold in. He sees the pain and grief she’s endured, even so far removed from the carnage he’s been living through, and he hears Anakin’s voice, a voice that shoots through him like a blaster shot. 

“You really don’t know anything about life outside of this temple, do you master?” He can’t remember when Anakin had asked him this, or even why, but he remembers huffing, and Anakin saying, “Not formal diplomacy or trade laws, but the actual life for beings outside the temple, outside the senate halls and galactic embassies.” He realizes now just how right Anakin was, which shouldn’t have really been a surprise, for Anakin could read Obi-Wan like a book, always knew when Obi-Wan needed someone to talk to. He would even offer to meditate with him if he was particularly out of it, and there was very little Anakin hated more than meditation. He wonders if Anakin felt the pain this girl feels, if he too had been hurt with the burden of a guardian unfit to truly take care of him. 

“I’m so sorry,” He offers the girl in front of him, though he knows that the words are meaningless. They are words with no true target. Is he sorry for her? Is he sorry for Anakin? For himself? Of course, the answer for all of these questions is yes, but to acknowledge that asks too much of the broken man, so he simply moves on. 

“I’ve realized I don’t know your name.” He wants to, needs to change the subject. Needs to get the pain off of the girl’s face, needs to stop thinking about how familiar that pain is.

“Mara. I’m Mara.” The girl, Mara, rolls her shoulders back, as though she were trying to shake off the weight of their previous conversation, and Obi-Wan wishes he could do that too. 

“Why did you come here?” the words leave Mara’s mouth as though they had been building up, as though they too had been shaken loose in her effort to move on. 

“I came with a proposal for your mother.”

“What kind of proposal?”

“I’m not sure if you are aware of what has been going on in terms of the Republic, and its fall?” Mara nods. “Good. Well, the Jedi have been essentially exterminated. The entire Order is gone, younglings and all. I’m looking for the former Jedi, the ones that are no longer part of the Order, and were therefore safe from the masacare. I wanted to ask your mother to join me in putting a stop to the Empire, in reclaiming our freedom.”

Mara only nods again, this nod slower. 

“And this was your first stop.” It isn’t a question. 

“Yes.”

Mara lets out a long breath and stands up, taking their empty glasses away to clean. 

“Do you know where you’re going next?” She asks over her shoulder. 

“Yes,” He’s about to say the planets name before he stops himself. He feels as though somehow he’s told Mara too much, shown her too much, and that if he can keep this one thing to himself it will be a small victory.

“Hmm. Well you’d better stay here for the night. It’s getting dark out and you look like you haven’t properly slept in ages.” 

“I really should get going,”

“I insist. You won’t do yourself or your cause any good if you wreck your ship”

Obi-Wan concedes to this, and truthfully, she’s right. His tiredness has seeped into his bones, the weight of it becoming almost unbearable. 

She sets him up in the den, pulling a cot out from a closet and giving him a thick blanket. He looks up at her, a question on his lips. 

“The nights here are pretty cold. You’ll need it, trust me.” 

He nods, and after he’s set up, they eat a light dinner. As he watches her clean up, he is shocked again by how simultaneously old and young she seems, and his gut twists as he recognizes the sense of duty that caused this. He recognizes it because he had seen it on Anakin, stars, he had even felt it himself, both as a padawan and as a Jedi Knight once he had taken Anakin as his padawan.

Obi-Wan wakes to the sound of the door slamming shut. He opens his eyes, blinking rapidly as he takes in the fact that for the first time in years, he had woken after sunrise. He sits up, taking in his surroundings, and notices Mara coming in the door. She pauses just slightly before continuing her brisk stride over to the pile of bags in the middle of the room, bags that are most definitely not his. 

“Good morning,” she says, slightly out of breath. She grabs a large canvas bag and hefts it over her shoulder, it’s contents making a metallic clinking noise. 

“What’s going on?” Obi-Wan asks as he pulls his nerf-leather boots up over his socked feet.

“I’m loading up the ship,” Mara replies, shooting him a look over her shoulder as she exits the small house again, dust-door slamming shut behind her. 

Obi-Wan gets to his feet, rushing out the door to see Mara loading the bags on to the back of the beat-up civilian pleasure cruiser he was currently using. It was an ugly thing, and to be honest, Obi-Wan wasn’t even sure it was going to start when he found it after Anakin’s fall. Anakin had been puttering around with it for a few years, working on renovating it and equipping it for long distance. 

“Trust me, Master, once this war is over, we’ll have earned a vacation. And this beauty right here will get us there.” 

“Beauty?” Obi-Wan chuckled, “Anakin, this ship looks like a death trap.” 

Anakin rolled his eyes, but they contained none of the attitude he had recently adopted. “Don’t worry, once I’m done with her, she’ll be good as new.”

Anakin had looked so excited to start the new project, had looked so certain that they would come out of this war unscathed, that for a moment, Obi-Wan had let himself believe it too.

Unfortunately, Anakin never did finish renovating the ship, he hadn’t even fully finished his work on the engines by the time Obi-Wan had commandeered it, but so far, it hadn’t let him down- ugly as it may be. 

Mara jumps down from the rusty boarding platform, watching him warily as he approaches. 

“Those are not my bags,” Obi-Wan says, and Mara rolls her shoulders back, though her eyes still look at him cautiously. 

“No, they aren’t,” she replies, “They’re mine.”

Obi-Wan begins shaking his head before she can finish speaking. 

“Mara, you cannot-” 

“I’m coming with you,” Mara interrupts him. 

“Mara,-”

“Obi-Wan, do you know what this is?” she holds a metal canister up with a long cord running out of one end. Obi-Wan considers lying, but has a feeling that won’t help him any. Not with the glint of determination in Mara’s eyes.

“No, I do not know what that is,” he sighs. 

“This is a hyperspeed converter. It takes the CO that is naturally emitted from a ships engine and converts it into highly concentrated energy in order for a ship to shift into hyperspeed.”

“So, it’s important,” Obi-Wan is, at this point, even more confused than when he first came outside.

“Yes, it’s very important,” Mara rolls her eyes at him. “And yours was nearly detached.”

Obi-Wan grimaces a little. “Is that bad?”

“Obi-Wan one of two things were going to happen when you left this planet if I hadn’t found this. Number one is you get to the jump point and can’t make the jump. And I know you don’t have enough supplies to make it to the jump point and back. Number two is you make it to the jump point, make the jump, and then you can’t come off of hyperspeed, and you either crash your ship at another jump point or you crash when you run out of fuel.”

“Oh so that’s very bad,” 

“Now if you can reinstall this converter, then I’ll let you leave on your own,” she hands him the piece, “But if you can’t, well then someone needs to make sure you stay alive.”

Obi-Wan weighs the piece in his hand, shaking it a bit. It’s heavier than he thought it would be, and it’s nearly the size of his forearm. He moves it around again and nearly drops it, his fingers unable to get purchase on the smooth cylinder. 

He approaches the ship, going around the side to the open panel Mara must have removed it from. He looks in at the mess of wires and tubes, looking for any open spot for the converter to fit. Mara’s footsteps crunch on the sand behind him. 

“Give up yet?” She asks, her voice going comically high at the end.

“Not yet, no.” He mumbles, sticking his hand through one curtain of wires to see if there’s a space behind them. 

After staring and moving aside wires for a few minutes, Obi-Wan finally admits defeat, turning to Mara, who perks up immediately. She takes the converter from his hand, moving away from the open panel to the back of the ship. She pries up a panel near the exhaust pipe, plugging the converter into the obviously empty compartment.

“You tricked me!” Obi-Wan huffs indignantly, storming over to the panel she was now replacing. Mara smirks up at him.

“It wasn’t a trick! Not if you actually knew where the converter went.” Obi-Wan rolls his eyes at her before turning to go back into the house. 

“Well then, I suppose we’d better finish packing up the ship.” Mara’s face lights up and she bolts back into the house, leaving him quite literally in her dust. 

It’s nearly an hour later before Obi-Wan, Mara, and the strange BB-R2 hybrid make their way on to the ship. Mara had insisted they eat before they leave, then she had to pack replacement parts for the droid, who he had learned was called R-B. Boarding the ship, Mara looked back once more on her home, and Obi-Wan felt a surge of pity for her. It feels at once like it was just yesterday and ages ago that he seen a similar wistfulness on a young Anakin. Though Anakin was younger at the time than Mara is, the expression is eerily similar. This is all she has left of her family, and she’s leaving it behind to help someone she just met. He feels a strong surge of admiration for the young girl, and though his first instinct is to release the emotion into the force, he holds onto it this time. 

“Ready?” he asks, hand hovering over the switch that retracts the boarding platform back into the ship. She rolls her shoulders back, a gesture already familiar, then nods.

“Yeah. Lets go.” He flips the switch and there is a loud scraping noise as the platform jerkily rises into place, cutting off their view of the small house. Mara shakes her head slightly before looking down at her little droid atrocity. 

“Alright R-B, you ready to see the galaxy?”

The droid beeps in what Obi-Wan assumes is a happy manner. 


End file.
